Musicians have struggled for centuries with properly lighting their music score on their music stand, on a piano or organ, or held in their hands while singing.
Musicians perform and rehearse in many locations such as auditoriums, churches, private homes, and even outdoors. Lighting conditions are often poor thus making it difficult for the musicians to read the music.
Available music lighting solutions include basic and more expensive clip-on lights, basic piano lamps, expensive overhead racking and room lighting, and modified household lighting fixtures.
Generally, all music lights illuminate the music from above, employing a halogen, incandescent, or LED lamp attached to a fixed or flexible goose neck, which is attached to the music stand by means of a crude spring tensioned clamp or placed directly on the surface of a keyboard instrument.
Standard music stand lights and piano lights present many problems, such as inconsistent lighting of the music score both in brightness and in coverage, excessive over-lighting, glare and light in the eyes of the musician, obstruction of the important musician's view of the audience or the conductor, critical eye contact between musicians themselves, and obstruction of the audience's view of the musician. Used on a piano, the overhead light detracts from the beauty of the piano, organ, or music stand.
Generally, the lights require electrical power and in most orchestra settings, this means the use of several extension cords that can be hazardous and unsightly.
For vocalists there are no sensible lighting solutions and they are generally left to rely on whatever room lighting is available.
There are other applications such as artwork lighting and lighting for book reading that share similar issues.
There is a need for a lighting system that provides substantially uniform lighting of a page or other substantially planar and vertical object such as artwork or book. The lighting system must provide minimal spillage outside the light area and must be non-intrusive to the eyesight. It is also desirable that the lighting system be lightweight with low power consumption, low heat dissipation and is optionally battery operable.